Resolution
by Angelfirenze
Summary: Angel has a long awaited discussion with the one person he has never been able to please.


Resolution By Angelfirenze  
  
Disclaimer: Angel and his father belong to Joss and Co. Argh, I need to stop working on so many stories at once! Anyway, this is a fic based off one called 'Blame' that I read at a site called, Kizmet's Bookshelf. It was about Angel's father's thoughts immediately following his son's body being found. I decided to expand on that. And there is a quote near the end that belongs to a fic writer whose name I don't know. She/He wrote a fic, but I've forgotten what it's called. One thing: The author said that Angel's sister's name was Kathleen. On the show, it's actually Katherine, so I'm keeping it like that. Katherine. Another thing: In all my fanfics, Angel was seventeen when he died. I don't know why, he just is. Also, this is somewhat AU because, instead of Angel giving Connor over to a whole new life, he raises his son himself. This is not just my idea. It seems to be of plenty of other people's opinions, as well. Anyway, Summary: One night at his sub-Wolfram and Hart apartment, or wherever he is now, while taking care of baby Connor, Angel finds out that somehow, one of the Powers has decided to give him back anyone from his past, and, voila! Lyrics from The (International) Noise Conspiracy and Bayside. Punk lyrics, kids! And this is B/A, damn it! 'Chosen' sucked! What was that, like, TWELVE COMBINED MINUTES of Angel?! ARGHHHHHH! I think Buffy, Xander, and Dawn moved in with him after they left Sunnydale. Angel's soul is permanent! Screw Joss' bogus machinations! AND TO ALL THE PEOPLE READING 'HEREDITY,' I WILL FINISH! I PROMISE!  
  
***  
  
I wonder  
  
If I said the right things  
  
Would this wound have bled so much  
  
Words are all that we have left for us  
  
***  
  
They said I could have anyone I wanted. I could have let my son finally meet and spend time with his mother. But, somehow, I believe there'll be time for that later. The only other person who I think I could have used this opportunity for stands before me. He doesn't look any different from when I last saw him, which is to be expected. I didn't think he would age very much. The only difference is the neck wounds are gone.  
  
"Liam?" he squints at me, and then the memories come flooding back. I can see them, practically, slamming into his mind like a hammer. I was a vampire. I killed my mother and sister. I killed him. He backs away from me, now, colliding with a bookshelf behind him and knocking the books to the floor.  
  
"Demon!" He whispers. "Lord, bind this demon, now."  
  
With every word, I flinch. I remember them well. However, in the room immediately to his right, I can hear my son stir and awaken, crying and irritated. Ignoring my father for the moment, I rush past him. I can't worry about the fact that he jerked away violently as I came near. All I can worry about is Connor. My son.  
  
My little boy lies in his crib, wailing, annoyed by the noise. He is not frightened, however. He never is. Going to him and picking him up, wrapping my arms around his tiny body, I start to sing to him. He's a strange one, my Connor. He likes punk. I don't actually know where he got that from.  
  
***  
  
Hey I was born into a mess naked undressed  
  
Can't pretend that it doesn't mean a thing  
  
This happiness that corruption brings  
  
Cause it is freedom they say  
  
But I cant wait for this freedom to go away  
  
Cause I can't find any peace here  
  
Just used emotions everywhere  
  
And gratitude to a trickle down deal  
  
***  
  
He smiles and giggles now. He thinks this song is funny. Personally, I think it fits him like no other. Not that he knows that. Surrendering to the fact that I will not get any casework done, I carry Connor into the living room where my father still stands. He is in shock, now.  
  
"Y-you have a-" "A son," I tell him, looking him in the eye. "Named Connor. You woke him up when you smashed into the bookshelf there." I hold up Connor, turning him to face his grandfather. "Connor, this is your grandpa. His name is Malachy. But your grandma used to call him Patrick, which is his middle name. He's a very nice man, if you don't go out of your way to make him mad at you. I have a feeling you won't, though."  
  
Then I add, in a lower voice that my father notices, "You're not like your papa."  
  
My father looks at me, then, and something in his face changes. "Liam?" He asks me, placing a hand to his forehead then letting it drop. I glance at him before returning my attention to my fidgeting son.  
  
"How old is he?" He asks, a tiny smile on his lips. I smile, too. A wider, brighter one. Father stares at me, astonished. I never used to smile around him. "He is a year and nine months old. He will be two years old on the 21 November, 2003."  
  
Father chokes and goggles at me. Connor giggles again.  
  
"What year is it, you say?" His voice is faint, disbelieving. It's to be expected.  
  
"2003. Two hundred and fifty years, almost, from the night you remember." "An' yer a vampire." It wasn't a question. I nod, my expression assuring him that I'm not enjoying it. "An' is he one, as well?" "No, he's human. But he'll have, um, demonic strength and reflexes, and all that."  
  
Father nods, getting a grip, so to speak. "Ah, so, where is his mother?"  
  
I look my father in the eye again and tell him, in a calm voice, "She died the night he was born."  
  
Sadness fills my father's eyes and he looks again at his grandson. His voice is sad, as well, when he speaks next, "So you're raising him yerself, then?"  
  
"Not really," I tell him, shifting Connor in my arms again to keep him from falling. "Do you want to sit down?"  
  
Father looks around at my apartment and then hesitantly seats himself on the leather couch. He isn't used to any of this. It's all new to him.  
  
"What do you mean, yeh're not raisin' him yerself? Are yeh married?"  
  
I shake my head and his brow furrows. "*sigh* I'm getting married, though, in a few months."  
  
At this, his expression lightens up. "To who?" he asks, obviously surprised. As well he should be. I sure as hell am.  
  
"The Vampire Slayer," I say, not being able to keep the smile from creeping into my words. Sure enough, Father looks at me with a confused air about himself. Connor giggles and he looks down at him, curled in my lap, pulling at the buttons on my jacket. One of them comes off in his tiny hand. I'll fix it later. Connor puts it into his mouth and I immediately tell him no and pull it back out. "Bad button!" I tell him, turning him to face me with a semi-stern look on my face. "We don't eat buttons, buddy; it'll hurt you."  
  
My son watches me and then grins. I sigh, abandoning my halfhearted but loving attempts to reprimand him. I pick Connor up and stand again, lifting him above my head and pretending to make him fly like Superman. "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Connor! Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to fill two diapers after a single meal! It's CONNOR!"  
  
He giggles and laughs as I make him fly all over the room, swooping and diving all around the furniture. "Da-da!" he screams with delight and I can't help but bring him down close and kiss his little head, once bald, but now full of thick unruly dark brown hair just like mine. "Da-da! Da- da!"  
  
Father watches, a smile on his face, and I can tell he never expected to live to see this. Not that he actually did. And that thought sobers me; brings me crashing down to the ground. I killed both my father and my son, and then I brought them both back to life. But I killed them first. Killed one to sate the bloodlust and the other to save him from himself. I don't even realize I'm crying until I taste salt in my mouth. In my arms, Connor begins to fidget, now upset by my sudden mood swing. He whimpers and begins to cry, as well. My father stares from the couch, thoroughly bewildered and unsure of what to do. Both his son and grandson are crying at once. Completely out of his realm of experience, I am certain.  
  
***  
  
I wonder  
  
Why you had to be in such a rush  
  
I'll march into my graveyard and bury you now  
  
The last man standing  
  
But not the last one laughing  
  
While worms eat your body and the fog covers your grave  
  
I'll still be trying  
  
To get your laugh out of my head  
  
***  
  
But this whole situation is entirely my fault. It always has been. If it hadn't been for my being so hard-pressed to prove him and his stupid, pointless, in the beginning groundless accusations right. If I hadn't been so goddamned selfish, I wouldn't have died. Nor would my family have died. Nor would thousands of people have died. This is how I've gotten through the last century or so; by the skin of my pathetic little ass. If I didn't have Buffy, or Connor, or the others I'd have gone completely fucking mental by now. I should have bothered to ask him why he would come to such conclusions about me and what I was doing. I should have tried, not to prove him right, but to prove him WRONG. Could have, would have, should have. Too little, too late. I remember so many fights, and so many late nights. We used to shout ourselves hoarse. It was me trying to defend my inexplicable actions and him trying to get through to me. Well, I've always been thick headed. Not stupid, my mother said, just stubborn. Another trait I got from the bemused old man sitting on my couch with not a clue about why my son and I are suddenly both crying. But, while I calm myself down, mostly what I think of, is how I used to hate him.  
  
***  
  
Do you know that every night I think of ways that I can spite you?  
  
Call me when you're dead or you can finally live with yourself.  
  
Consider this a favor-consider this.  
  
***  
  
Breathing deeply, I quickly master myself and concentrate on calming Connor down. I shush into his ear, kissing the side of his head, and then I make certain he's looking at me. Then I change over to my game face. I hear my father gasp and attempt unconsciously to move away from me. I put it and all the feelings it brings up out of my mind. At the moment, I can only be concerned with Connor. Sure enough, my little boy stops screaming and looks at me, his ice blue eyes-so much like Darla's-glazed over with tears. I open my fanged mouth and smile at him, needing for the moment to block everything else out. It's just him and me. Us and our instincts. The latent darkness inside us both is humming. I look human but I'm not. He's human, essentially, but still not. My father is afraid. I can smell it. Hate that I love it. That fear smells so good. I remember the night he died under my fangs. I told him what I'd been feeling for so long, but he obviously wasn't listening. And, let's be frank here, who the hell's going to be listening when your own son is threatening you with a new set of fangs?  
  
Connor smiles and relief washes over me. I change back from my game face over to human and can hear my father exhale although, to his credit, it's only due to my vampiric hearing. But then, my already overtaxed brain is off to work. Memories fly over me and I remember, with a clarity that would be jarring for most, the last fight we had.  
  
***  
  
I just need some more  
  
Just need some more time  
  
It's not how we should say goodbye  
  
Wasted my time  
  
***  
  
We were fighting again, as usual, but this time it was different. I told my father that if I was such a dishonorable son, then maybe I shouldn't stay around. What with my tarnishing the family name as I so often did. Father protested and tried to stop me, but I pushed past him and continued down the steps, through the dining room, and into the kitchen where my mother and sister were waiting. Both were crying. I knelt down to wipe the tears from my baby sister's face. Katherine was only eight. Kathy. I had been there her entire life and, all of a sudden, I was leaving and never coming back. I told her not to cry; that we would meet again. And we did, but I was only there in body. Father strode past me to come stand in front of the door. I told him to move. He told me that if I left, I couldn't ever return.  
  
"Go through it, but don' ever expect ter come back."  
  
Of course, at the time I didn't intend to. And if I did, I stupidly assumed that I would just be welcomed back. At the time, though, I was angry and felt like being sarcastic.  
  
"As you wish, Father. Always, *just* as you wish."  
  
Father looked at me then, the picture of anger. "It's a son I wished fer - a man - instead God gave me you! A terrible disappointment."  
  
***  
  
I fell deaf to everything you said  
  
I didn't mean to but you ask for it  
  
I meant everything I said  
  
We're through now cause you bring me down  
  
***  
  
That took me back. I hated the fact that he thought me nothing more than a mistake. A regretted undertaking. Like a failed project. I was his son, for bloody's sake, not some business dealing gone bad. I was only the way I was because he'd made me like that.  
  
***  
  
So take this razor, sign your name across my wrists  
  
So everyone will know who left me like this  
  
***  
  
"Disappointment? A more dutiful son you couldn' have asked for. My whole life yeh've told me in word, in glance, what it is you required of me, and I've lived down ter your every expectations, now haven' I?"  
  
Or so I'd thought.  
  
"That's madness!"  
  
He, I suppose, was trying to tell me that whatever he expected of me, I was supposed to rise above and beyond all that. Good OR bad. Too bad that's not how a teenage boy thinks.  
  
"No. The madness is that I couldn' fail enough fer yeh. But we'll fix that now, won' we?"  
  
I was going to show him just how much of a failure I could really be. Just how much I could make him rue the day I was born. I certainly did. If I couldn't make him proud of me, make him love me, than what was the point of existing? By then I didn't feel like living anymore.  
  
***  
  
Begin my downfall  
  
Cause I met another person  
  
And this time she says that she likes me  
  
And I like her eyes  
  
So in advance for when I fail I wanna say I'm sorry  
  
***  
  
"I fear fer you, lad."  
  
As well he should have. I should have feared more for myself than I did, but like I said, I no longer cared.  
  
"And is that the only thing you can find in yer heart fer me now, Father?"  
  
It was like a sledgehammer to my gut, my heart. The only thing my father could feel for me was fear? He really didn't love me anymore.  
  
"Who'll take yeh in, eh? No one!"  
  
It didn't matter. I would rather have slept in the gutter than in the home of a man who no longer wanted me as a son.  
  
***  
  
Nothing is real  
  
And I want you to know  
  
That I'm not alright  
  
When you tear open my chest  
  
I'll try not to flinch  
  
Won't make promises  
  
You taught me that I'm still losing what's left of  
  
My self esteem  
  
And I'm still watching the slow fading of all my daydreams  
  
***  
  
"I'll not lack fer a place to sleep, I can tell yeh that. Out o' my way."  
  
He stopped me then, grasping my shoulder, and turned me round. The look on his face was desperate. It was his version of a last ditch effort to save me. Save me from what?  
  
"I was never in yer way, boy."  
  
Myself, that's who. He wanted me to go, myself, to church and confession. He wasn't going to force me, of course. Not seeing this at the time, I opened the door and stormed out.  
  
"If you'll go courtin' trouble, yeh're sure ter find it!"  
  
Those were the last words he said to me.  
  
***  
  
And I thought you were stronger than ones before  
  
When I said that I needed some time  
  
I didn't expect you to quit  
  
Now that I lost you  
  
Feels like I lost myself  
  
I found regret  
  
***  
  
I look at him now, my heart twisted in knots. Connor squirms in my arms and I stare at Father, thinking of how strained our relationship was and is, and how it wasn't always that way. That was so long ago, though. I don't know if I can fix it all this time. Walking slowly, silently, over to him I faintly register his eyes landing on my feet. I'd forgotten that I generally don't make any noise when I walk. Gingerly, I sit down next to him. Connor is looking down at his grandfather, his eyes wide and curious. My father's eyes are not so wide, but they are still filled with curiosity at this tiny little wonder he has for a grandson. A baby boy who is stronger than he is. A boy who isn't even supposed to exist. One who has an enormous and burdening destiny before him. He must grow up to destroy a demon who wanted him dead before even I was born.  
  
"The one sired by the vampire with a soul shall grow to manhood and destroy Sahjahn." I repeat the prophecy involving my son under my breath and Father glances at me.  
  
"What's that?" he asks, his brow wrinkling. "*sigh* A prophecy that's about Connor when he grows up." I sigh again, remembering the night he was taken. My fight with Sahjahn. His reasons for all the chaos he reaped, all the lives he helped ruin. Connor's mostly. Not that I didn't help. "He'll grow up to destroy a demon." I say simply. My father nods as if this is as normal as going over his ledger to check acquisition of stock.  
  
Ha.  
  
"How do yeh know that?" He asks. It's a fair question. "Heard it straight from the demon's mouth," I say, removing my shoes and stretching to put my stocking feet on the table. Father frowns. He always would tell me to take my feet down when I put them up on my writing desk. I know the question of why I'm not trying to kill him is about to pop up and lo and behold:  
  
"Liam, why are you-you again, an' not that-that thing?" His voice is gruff, pleading, and confused all at once. If Buffy were here right now instead of visiting Giles with Dawn and Xander, she would see exactly where I get so many of my lovely qualities. *snort* Dodging the question for the moment, I focus on Connor. It is entirely too painful to bring up my vampirism and my soul and everything that's happened to me. I give Connor my hand and let him play with it. He puts it in his mouth. I don't care. I always make sure my hands are very clean when I play with him. Father stares at me, obviously expecting an answer. That's the thing about parents. 'When I ask you a question, I expect an answer. Do I make myself clear?' Then it hits me again that I'm a parent, too.  
  
"Liam," Father begins, but I interrupt. "I don't-really want to talk about all that, right now. I-I just can't, alright?" I try to say it as calmly as I can and fail miserably. Father's grey eyes widen slightly and he looks at me, frowning somewhat. Then he nods and bites his bottom lip. Connor gurgles and Father looks down at him, smiling again. He picks up Connor's tiny, pale hand and engulfs it in his large, slightly reddened one. He chuckles as Connor smiles.  
  
I look out the window and see the sun coming up. I could smell the sunrise coming hours ago, but ignored it as there were more important things to worry about. Sure enough, Connor yawns and starts to fidget again. He's cranky and wants to sleep. Tomorrow, I will begin to set things right with my father. For now, I-we need to sleep.  
  
"Rest and the answers will come," I whisper, loud enough for Father to understand me this time. He smiles.  
  
"I told you that when you were small. You were always so impatient."  
  
I smirk slightly, "I still am."  
  
We both stand and prepare to go to sleep. I put Father in one of my guest rooms. Tomorrow, we will get answers. Tomorrow.  
  
***  
  
If I surrender to this feeling Maybe all the aches and pains will go and I can close my eyes  
  
Never again to have them open till i bleed out all I've been  
  
I don't want to be alone no more  
  
No more  
  
*** 


End file.
